


Tea With The Gryphon

by luthorienne



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 12:17:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1093779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luthorienne/pseuds/luthorienne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which a charming Welsh town has more than its fair share of international assassins.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tea With The Gryphon

He had always enjoyed Wales, from his earliest days as a mercenary. The rugged, stubborn resilience of the place appealed to him, and he’d spent more than one hiatus between jobs exploring Snowdonia, climbing the interiors of the half-ruined towers of Welsh kings gone by, letting the wind stream out his hair and the skirts of his coat as he stood atop the rocky keep of Dolbadarn. He’d vaulted dozens of dry stone walls, made friends with flocks of sad-faced soggy sheep and earnest, suspicious sheepdogs, cast flies in the rocky streams in Betws-Y-Coed, and taken bread and cheese and hot leek soup with a farm family near Llanberis. He’d once garroted a man at midnight in the lee of the Granary Tower of Caernarfon Castle, the light of a full moon streaming across the Lower Ward and turning the scene to eerie black-and-white. He shook his head. It was better not to work in a place you loved, but some things couldn’t be helped.

At any rate, Welshpool was still clean. So far. And he hoped he could keep it clean, for today, at least. 

He was tucked into a corner near a warm fire in the Green Dragon Pub, a good sightline to the door and the bathrooms, a solid wall at his back. There was a soccer match on the television across the room, generating enough noise that he could expect to hold a private conversation. Assuming his quarry chose to converse, rather than just to take his shot. Clint had no illusions that his arrival in town had been unmarked, but he hoped he’d be able to leave later with no blood spilled.

He’d been here three days, and had spent most of the time with the prickly sense of someone watching him. A man in his profession learned patience, and Clint was in no hurry; only he feared the longer he waited, the less likely his chances of success. If he heard nothing tonight, he would have to report in, and SHIELD’s definition of success did not, he knew, coincide completely with his own. Phil had given him this chance, but he couldn’t wait forever. 

“It’s to be you, is it, young Hawk?”

The man appeared as if out of nowhere, two pints of Guinness in his hands. He was stocky, heavy-set, shaggy hair and full beard once black, now the same grizzled gray as his battered tweed jacket. He looked to be in his mid-fifties; Clint knew he was sixty-four. Clint smiled and moved his chair a little to the side, so each of them could have a wall at his back. 

“Good to see you, Gryphon,” he replied, accepting the glass and taking a sip. The Gryphon took his seat, raising a shaggy eyebrow at Clint’s easy acceptance of the drink. Clint shrugged. “You’ve had eyes on me for three days. If you’d wanted me dead, I’d be dead already.”

Owain Griffiths – the Gryphon, to the shadowy world they both inhabited – laughed heartily and raised his pint to Clint in a toast. “You’re a reckless lad,” he said in a deep bass rumble that turned into a deep bass cough. “I always liked that in you.” He took a deep swallow of Guinness and sighed. “Anyway, it would be a sin to adulterate the beer here.” He gave Clint a measuring look. “You look good, boy. How’s the work?”

“I have a side job now,” Clint replied, with an ironic smile. Griffiths laughed again, more quietly this time.

“I saw it on the telly,” he said. “Word is, you’re a superhero. And yet, here you are, still doing business as usual.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

The older man cocked his head, then turned to look at the television and the raucous soccer match. 

“What’s the score?”

“I can’t even figure out who’s playing,” Clint confessed, and Griffiths grinned. 

“Ah, like old times, you American heathen,” he said. Clint drew lines in the stray puddles on the table.

“What about you, Owain?” he asked quietly. “Business is brisk?”

“Ah,” said the Gryphon. “It is brisk.” He shrugged. “What’s a man to do, young Hawk? The days are too long, and the nights –“ He broke off, coughing again, shook his head, drank. “I fill the time with work.”

“I heard about Maggie,” Clint said quietly. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re a good lad,” Griffiths replied, eyes on his drink. “They said it was quick. It was only days, but -- I’d have been quicker.”

Clint touched his sleeve gently.

“No-one could ask that of you.”

“Only myself,” he replied, shaking his head. “And I couldn’t bring my hand to it. Not even for mercy.”

They were silent for a moment, then Griffiths patted his hand.

“Well. On to business, then.” He smiled thinly. “Yes, business is brisk. And your bosses have decided it’s time for the Gryphon to retire from the business. And sent you to organize the party.” He drank off the last of his pint. “I trust you’ll be as quick as myself in the old days.”

“It doesn’t have to be like that, Owain,” Clint said quietly. The Gryphon canted his head and smiled.

“SHIELD has a hawk and a spider in its fold, lad, they don’t need a gryphon, too. Let alone an old one who drinks too much.” He shook his head. “I’m not the man I was. You’ll not persuade me that your Nick fellow has need of another assassin.”

“SHIELD has need of all the wise heads and tradecraft it can get,” Clint said frankly. “We took a lot of losses in New York and New Mexico. A lot of losses at my hand.”

“That wasn’t your doing, so I hear,” Griffiths said sharply. “They don’t blame you?”

“I blame me,” Clint said simply. “Let me bring you in, Owain. It would wipe out some of the red in my ledger.”

“Ah, that’s your spider-girl talking.”

“If I get up to fetch another round, are you going to be here when I get back?” Clint asked. The Gryphon grinned.

“Have you ever known me walk away from a drink?” he asked. 

 

As he waited at the bar for the owner to pull two more pints, Clint let his eyes slip shut. Having a grandmaster assassin watching you meant there was only one guy in the place likely to get the chance to take a kill shot. It was surprisingly comforting. He smiled ironically, pressing thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose. He wondered what Phil would say about that.

Back at the table, Owain accepted his pint with a salute and drank. Wiping foam off his moustache, he sat back, folding his hands over his midriff.

“So. That was you in Bistritz last March, was it not?”

Clint smiled.

“You know I can’t tell you that, Owain.”

“Oh, I know, I know. But it was you. I recognized your technique.”

“I imagine you did – you taught me how to do that.”

“Really? I must have been drunk.”

“It’s possible we both were.”

“Ah, we had some times, did we not? Maggie worried you were too reckless, but I knew you’d steady down, just as I did myself.”

“You and Maggie were always good to me, Owain. I learned a lot from you. Both of you.” He took a mouthful of Guinness, swallowed the dark, bitter liquid. “Let me bring you in. Please.”

The Gryphon looked at him hard for a long moment, unmoving. Clint met his eyes steadily.

“Two questions, then,” he said finally. “What would your Nick fella do with an old man like me?”

“If I know Nick, he’d gloat over you like a miser with gold,” Clint replied. “Your insights, your knowledge, your techniques – who has tradecraft like that anymore?”

“You do, lad,” said the Gryphon easily. Clint shook his head.

“I have a shadow of it. And I’m in the field. SHIELD needs someone to mentor the young agents, Owain, and no-one could do it better than you.”

“Mmm.” The Gryphon was silent a long moment. “And then, question the second: why would I take your offer?”

Clint regarded his folded hands for a moment. “Money. The pay’s pretty good, and it’s steady. The benefits are great. We have a medical program that might even be able to wring out your old concrete liver and make it go again.”

The older man laughed and patted his shoulder. 

“I don’t look for miracles, lad, even from you. No, the money’s no temptation; I’ve money enough. What else?”

The soccer match was over, and the barman called, “Time, gentlemen, please,” and Clint could see his chance slipping away. 

“Walk with me,” he said finally. With a sad smile, Griffiths nodded.

Out the front door, they turned right up Church Road.

“Trust you to choose the steepest street in the place,” grumbled Griffiths. “It’s a new way of doing the deed, I’ll give you that.”

“You can make it, you old crock,” Clint assured him. “If you fall down, I’ll carry you.”

At the top of the hill stood Christ Church and its ancient churchyard. The old church was now in private hands and its gates were shut, but the two men stood and leaned on the iron railings, looking down the moonlit slope of the churchyard with its hunched gravestones.

“You’re tired, Owain,” Clint said finally. “I see it in you. It’s wearing you down, all the watchfulness. You had Maggie to watch your back, but that’s gone, now. You don’t have a safe place anymore, not really. One day, you’ll get distracted and someone’ll get the drop on you.”

“I’ve known that fifty years, young Hawk. I’m not so keen on living forever as I was when it was you and Maggie and me at the table. None of us is likely to die in a warm bed with a full belly.” He began to cough again, pulling out a crumpled handkerchief and blowing his nose. Clint gave him a sidelong glance, stepping back pointedly.

“Sounds like one of us is likely to die tonight,” he said critically. “You got a hairball?”

“And a pain in my arse,” Griffiths replied. “The size and shape of a heathen American bowman.”

Griffiths stood silent a long moment, looking down the slope. Clint watched his hands – Owain’s hands had always told him more than Owain’s face. They were clasped now, the fingers working slowly in the cool night air.

“We had a daughter, Maggie and I,” he said finally. “Elizabeth. Bethy.”

Clint nodded silently. It was in the dossier.

“We don’t speak. Not for ten years and more.” He looked away sharply toward a spinney where a fox barked. “She came to know what I do – what I am. She couldn’t stomach it.” He glanced at Clint, smiling bitterly. “She didn’t come to her mother’s burial.”

There was nothing he could say, so he said nothing, but extended a careful hand to brush Griffiths’s coat sleeve with his fingertips, surprised when the old man reached out and patted his hand.

“You’re a good lad, for all you’re no Welshman,” he said. “I’m proud of you. You’re what I would have wanted if Maggie and I had had a son.” He turned away and sighed. “Let me think it over tonight. Can you give me until tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow noon,” he said. He could persuade Phil to wait that long. “And then I have to call it, Owain.”

 

Clint contemplated not picking up Phil’s check-in call that night. Saying ‘I told you so’ was never one of Phil’s indulgences, but they both knew Phil _had_ told him so. But if he failed to pick up, Phil would assume the worst, and the Gryphon would be history within the hour. Clint answered, switching off the bedside light in the hope that it would help his headache recede.

“I made the pitch,” he said, before Phil could ask. “He has until noon tomorrow to think it over.” Phil said nothing for a moment.

“What’s your sense?” he asked finally. Clint sighed.

“I can’t get a good read,” he admitted. “He’s tired. He’s had a tough couple of years.”

“You’re tired, too,” Phil said. “Everything okay?”

“I have a headache,” Clint admitted. “You talk to Nick?”

“Yeah. He said, and I quote, ‘If that fucking Hawkeye brings in anymore lethal animals we’ll have to start putting in cages.’” Phil paused. “I think he’d be pleased, though.”

“Yeah. Me, too.” He turned on his side, just breathed for a moment. “I don’t want to have to take him out, Phil.”

“You want me to send Ward?” Phil’s tone was gentle. 

“Fuck, no. Owain would put him in a box before Ward got his passport stamped.” Clint sighed. “If it has to be done, I’ll do it. I owe him that much respect.”

“We’ll hope he makes the right decision, then,” Phil said simply. “Get some sleep. Check in tomorrow as soon as you know.”

 

Morning was clear and cold, and Clint spent as much of it as he could wandering the streets and ducking into little shops. If Welshpool was going to be bloodied, he wanted to enjoy as much of it as he could before the stains set in. Toward noon, he felt the eyes on him again, and he made his way back to the pub, settling into the same corner, warming his hands around a mug of sludge that the barkeep assured him was coffee. Clint found it drinkable with the addition of a good deal of cream and sugar, though he was prepared to swear it wasn’t coffee. He blamed it, though, for the unsettled feeling in his gut. 

He heard Owain this time before he saw him, the deep cough audible from the doorway. 

“Ah, good day, young Hawk,” he said, stuffing his handkerchief away in his coat pocket as he made his way through the crowd by the bar. “And how is it there’s no pint here for the old man?”

“I wasn’t sure the old man was actually coming,” Clint replied, rising. “Guinness?”

“Guinness,” Griffiths said, “to be sure.”

Clint went to the bar and ordered two pints, trying to read Griffiths’s intentions by his face. All he could tell is that the old man was apparently engrossed in the local weather report on the television.

“So?” he said as he set the pint down before the Gryphon. “Have you thought about it?”

“I have,” said Griffiths, sipping delicately at his pint. “I did you a favour this morning, by the way.”

“Oh?” Clint reflected that it was almost never a good thing when a grandmaster assassin did you a favour. Or, at least, it wasn’t a good thing for somebody.

“You came through the passage down by The Pheasant, just before you went into the jeweler. That was a nice bauble you bought, by the way, young Hawk. Was that for your spider-girl, or have you another warm armful tucked away?”

“Jesus, Owain, what the hell?” He’d bought a silver locket for Tasha. And he’d have sworn there was no-one in the shop but him and the clerk. Griffiths grinned. It was mildly terrifying.

“Will Fitzroy picked you up in Jehu Street. He was tucked in nice and snug in Britannia Passage, waiting while you did your shopping. Well,” Griffiths amended, “he’s waiting there still, but not so snug, now, poor lad. Belike he’d have wanted you to have this,” he added, extending a palm with a gleaming knife on it. “You’re slipping, young Hawk. I’m beginning to think your SHIELD might need the old Gryphon after all.”

Clint had been ice from the core out since he’d heard Fitzroy’s name. Was every fucking contract killer in Europe in Welshpool today? He picked up the blade, folded it in a napkin and put it carefully away in his jacket. At least his hand was steady.

“Thanks, Owain,” he said, managing to sound calm and relaxed. “You think he was here for you or for me?”

Griffiths laughed, then cursed as it devolved into another coughing spell. 

“Oh, for me, most like. You were just a fine chance, strolling along, thinking of your girl. That spider-girl’s no good for you, young Hawk.”

“So you’ve said,” Clint replied, sipping his Guinness. His headache was back with a vengeance. He took a deep breath and met Griffiths’ faded brown eyes. Time to grasp the nettle. “Owain. It’s past noon, and my handler’s waiting for a call. Have you decided?”

“I have.” Griffiths raised his glass and drank. “You know, young Clinton, I’m an old man. I’ve done a few things in my life. Made a name for myself in my profession. Earned the respect of my peers,” he added, saluting Clint with his glass. “Even had a family. Now our Bethy, she has a child. Sarah. Pretty thing, and smart with it. She’s at the University. Wants to be a doctor.” He stared at the television for a moment. “They’ve not much money, and won’t take a penny of mine. Too proud. The money’s bloodied, I’m told.” He gazed down at his clasped hands, then sidelong at Clint. “If I take your offer, I want the money to go to Sarah. Fix it so she doesn’t know it’s from me. Can you do it so?” 

“Yes.” Clint had no idea how, but between Nick and Stark, they’d manage it. The Gryphon nodded.

“Well, then. We’ll drink to my new career, shall we?” He held out his empty pint. “Ah, you’ll need to be quicker than that, lad. Can’t drink with an empty glass, mm? Oh,” he added as Clint rose, “I’ll have a nice hot steak and ale pie, too. Seein’ as your Nick fellow’s buying.”

**Author's Note:**

> The Gryphon declined to explain to me why he doesn't care for Tasha. He may be more forthcoming in future tales.


End file.
